I will give this reference point: In about 6 years I have posted one
review. One. I neither absolutely hate a place or absolutely love it
enough to put forth the effort to share my opinion. So, that should say a
whole lot about how much I hated this place. Firstly I must mention to
you that my friend and I, we like trying new cuisines & flavours, we
go out for food at least twice a month and we usually don’t pay over
20-25$ per person. I must also declare to you that we don’t have strange
willing on food. We decided to go to this new restaurant as we wanted
to eat traditional mexican food. We tried the “guacamole”, the size of
the dish was really small for the price we had to pay. “Gorditas” were
absolutely dry and they weren´t even real gorditas as in Mexico are. The
pork “cochinita” was disgusting, made with tomatoes, we couldn´t even
feel the taste of the proper spices of this famous mexican dish, and
difficult to swallow. It came with a really salty peanut sauce on the
side. Nor the tortillas “Old el Paso” were good enough. It was honestly
the worst Mexican food I’ve ever had. The worst service. The worst
drinks. Bleh. Bleh, bleh, bleh.

The atmosphere is lively, but it feels too cramped inside. The chairs are not very comfortable, either. The service is pretty slow, they apparently don’t know how to take down an order. The lady who served us was not friendly at all and the food was cold when we got it. “Ceviche” was absolutely bad, bitter instead of fresh lime flavour. Fried beans had a weird acidic taste. I’ve gone to many Mexican restaurants over the years, and Xola is nothing special.

I am Mexican and I went to Xola recently. I want to say this is an AUTHENTIC Mexican restaurant! The people there is soooo friendly, the food excellent quality. I can’t wait to go again!! Price are good too, very affordable. I just loved this place, the food, the people and the atmosphere…It was an amazing experience going there. Congratulations to the Chef Malinalli Fernandez, she is an excellent cook!

I am Mexican, originally from Puebla and I have been in MANY MANY “Mexican” restaurants, and never had the best and original Mexican food as I did in Xola! wow loved the place! the chef is GRANDE! she really knows how to prepare real Mexican food and takes the time on each dish! you have to be there and try it! congratulations!

I´m mexican, from Mexico D.F., and tonight I went to this restaurant to give it a shot, but my experience was really disappointed. It wasn´t the authentic mexican cuisine, nothing to do with the food i was reared. I miss so much my grandma´s recipes, and I couldn´t feel any of these flavours. I think everything was kind of frozen, same food you can buy at No Frills, so you´re only gonna waste your time and your money. Try some other place with real mexican food.

At Xola, our goal is to provide Torontonians a taste of our Mexican heritage through our food – providing authentic Mexican cuisine. We strive for our customers to have the best possible experience and recognize that we are not perfect and are always open to constructive feedback. However, the comments above are not constructive, so much so, that we question the motivations behind them; the several comments all in a short period of time are indeed suspicious. If the author(s) comments are genuine, your experience was bad, we would like to discuss with you. And if they are not, we ask you to stop slandering our reputation.
Sincerely,
Mali Fernandez List
Owner Xola

Worst mexican restaurant ever! Tasted bad and after got home I had the worst stomachache of my entire life. Don´t waste your money in there. There are a lot of good restaurants in Toronto, but Xola is the worst.

One last post in this website, just because I want everybody to know that I’ve been very recently contacted by, as I understand, the managing team of Xola Restaurant. A couple of days ago, I got one message in my Facebook account from someone who spoke as if she were part of the directing team of Xola restaurant; in it, far from apologizing for the upsetting experience we had at their place, they used the message to “let me know” the fact that they’d be taking legal actions against myself for the alleged, and I quote: “defamatory of slanderous comments made in a public forum”. Maybe they don’t understand fully the concept “freedom of speech”, or maybe they’re afraid of everybody knowing what actual customers of their restaurant think about the food; the thing is, in my humble opinion, they should spend way more time improving the quality of what they offer and less time trying to scare costumers into their point of view. However, as I never disrespect anybody with my reviews, and EVERYTHING is based on my real experience at Xola Restaurant, and, of course, because this is a free country (and I thank god for that), I don’t plan on letting myself be bullied by this group and I will keep on using my right of expressing my honest opinion about the places I visit.

I live in the neighbourhood and was very excited to see a Mexican restaurant down the street from where I live. Then I looked at the menu and the prices. Wow, it is very expensive for Mexican! I emailed my friend from Mexico about it and even she agreed, it was way overpriced. Too bad, I’m not going to bother to try it at those prices.

What an embarrassing list of comments. You should all give your collective heads a shake and take your petty disputes elsewhere. I live in the beach, and went to Xola the week after it opened. It was packed. Gave one lady our cell, and she called 10 minutes later, table was ready. The service was friendly. It wasn’t slow. I don’t think the food was amazing, but it was decent, and definitely different for our ‘hood. It is a bit pricey, and they might have to make some adjustments to appeal to the locals. I hope they do, and I hope they stay. I will try them again. This is likely the only legit comment on here, by the way.

I am curious to know when I read an article about Xolas it said they used to own Flamico at embrujo……..I read another article that stated you were three sisters from Madrid! But the recent article about Xolas says that your Mexican?? So I am wondering if you are Spanish or Mexican because let’s face it there is a big ocean in between the two countries!

I absolutely disagree with the practice of the owner of a restaurant forbidding someone to leave a bad review. To consider it slandering the restaurant’s reputation and leave Facebook messages threatening legal action is, in my opinion, a HUGE mistake, even if it is being tried in a few places. People don’t like to be suppressed for speaking their opinion and they will vigorously protest & advertize their experience. I am a beaches resident who lives within a few blocks of the restaurant & I was trying to find a menu online for us to try the restaurnat today, the first day of our holidays. After seeing the negative post from the owner & reading what happened after the diner’s review, we will not be ordering from Xola’s today. If I might make a suggestion from my perspective as a customer of any restaurant, let the best food possible be your response & always stay gracious; in other words, show respect to your customer, even when you disagree heartily. That makes me want to support you. Great customer service is even more important to me than a restaurant. I find oppression of any sort completely distasteful, even more than a very negative review.

Charlotte, I have tried all of the things you have tried and loved all of them. Someone needs relax a bit. This is a small family struggling to stay open through a touch winter. The chef alone is the mom of the family so no wonder she was upset…your so offensive. DO NOT LISTEN TO CHARLOTTE. Yelp will tell you the real story of this place. The fact that you used freedom of speech as an excuse to write not a bad review but a mean review just shows the person you are. This place is great, the family is great, they work so hard and because she happened to not have the best Mexican food is no excuse to slam them. You start your review with how bad it was because of how often you DON’t write bad reviews already drawing a terrible picture of them, then continue to slam them. Your review was stupid and not at all true. Try again and this time take a second to talk to the family a bit. Also this is not classic authentic Mexican, this is authentic Mexican with a twist…you just didn’t like the twist.

I just read about your place this morning. Then I saw the comments above. To be honest, when I read such comments they don’t deter me because they sound like they were written by people who have an axe to grind. Or are just angry at life. I worked as a waiter for many years so I used to meet jerks like this every day. I will most definitely come and give your place a try. If the food isn’t good I’ll let you know. Happy Canada Day!